


Mistake

by Anonymous



Category: Ib (Video Game), The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 12:36:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1093946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A certain portrait has been added to the Guertena exhibit by mistake. Post-canon for Dorian Gray, pre-canon for Ib.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mistake

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ShamanicShaymin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShamanicShaymin/gifts).



The gallery was full of bright lights, locked doors, and windows that revealed only fog, and Dorian couldn't remember how long he'd been wandering through the empty halls. His memory of what came before the gallery was a confused tangle, and something in him shied away from examining that tangle too closely, the same way he shied away from examining the mirrors he passed.

He was sure this was a nightmare. There was a certain rightness about this, about spending his dreams shuffling through endless rows of paintings - grotesque figures, most of them. Hanged men. Tragic brides. Beautiful women with soulless eyes. A whole room full of paintings labeled _Liar_. Yes, he thought, this was exactly what his nightmares should look like; the only surprising part was that he hadn't had this dream before now. Having decided that, he expected to promptly wake up in his own bed.

He didn't wake up.

Nightmare or not, there were other people here somewhere. He heard whispers, sometimes. He'd double back, return to a familiar room and find the statues had been rearranged. He'd hear something crash in the next room and find a broken, empty frame, or trails of paint that was still wet, smeared across the floor, leading nowhere. And there were times he'd have sworn he saw movement just at the other end of this corridor, or at the bottom of those stairs, or through that door; but no matter how fast he chased after it, he could never catch up. Until the girl with the yellow rose caught up to him.

"You can't go down there," she said from behind him. "Daddy's still painting."

Dorian had been standing at the top of a flight of stairs leading down into blackness, and the sudden voice in the silence of the gallery startled him so badly he nearly fell down the stairs. He fell heavily against the wall instead, and the child laughed at his surprise.

"Who-" he started, and stopped at the unwelcome sound of his own voice. Harsh, grating and unfamiliar. He closed his eyes and tried again. "Where-?"

"Mary," she said in answer to his first question. "My title's Mary. What's yours?"

"I-" _Title?_ "...I think a mistake's been made," he said. "I'm not sure how I got here, or where here is."

The little girl was pretty as a picture, twirling the yellow rose in her hand and staring up at him - and he was certain he'd wandered past just such a picture hanging somewhere in this gallery, a portrait of a child surrounded by roses. This girl must have been the model for the painting, but he was struck by a sudden, persistent mental image of that portrait coming to life and following him through these halls. He laughed at the thought, an unpleasant sound. If this was a nightmare, it was perfectly cruel; and if he was awake, he was going mad. Either way, he voiced his mad thought about paintings come to life to the girl, who smiled and nodded.

"Yes, of course."

"Yes, what?"

"Yes, I got out of my frame and followed you. Why were _you_ wandering around down here? Where's your frame?"

Dorian put a hand over his eyes, for a moment, choking down the same creeping, panicking feeling he'd been fighting off every time he passed a mirror in this place. Then he jerked his hand away again, with a shudder at the red stains on his skin that refused to go away. "I don't have a frame," he said, slowly and deliberately, "because I'm not a painting. I'm real. And whatever nonsense is going on here, I'm tired of it. How do I get out of this place?" He looked again toward the stairs that Mary had called him away from, the ones leading down into blackness, where she'd said her father was working. Painting. He'd had enough of painters to last lifetimes.

There was a mannequin at the bottom of the stairs, just barely visible in the shadows. It didn't have a head.

As he hesitated, Mary asked, "What's _real_ mean? Daddy says it, too. He wouldn't explain it to me."

He turned back to her, and in her wide, guileless eyes, for a moment all he could see was Sybil Vane, beautiful in her world of make-believe. His Juliet underneath a painted moon, before she'd been crushed by the touch of the _real_. Mary's eyes were so much like Sybil's, she could have been her daughter; and the blonde hair, so much like his own - or rather like his own had been, outside of this strange nightmare world where his hair had become dull and faded, to match his twisted limbs.

He looked again toward the stairs where her father would be painting, and for a moment he was half convinced it would be Basil at the bottom of those stairs. Or, no - not Basil at all, but his own reflection, young and beautiful just as it should be, and wandering around on its own. Then he shook his head, trying to shake the strange images out of it. Mary didn't look anything like Sybil at all, really, now that he looked again. It was just a passing fancy. His eyes weren't to be trusted, he told himself, and he put his stained hands firmly behind his back, where he didn't have to look at them. " _Real_ means I have to talk to your father. He'll know where to find the way out of here, won't he?"

"The way out? Everyone knows that. _I_ can show you that. You can't bother Daddy. He's _painting_."

"But I-" He started to gesture toward the stairs, but stopped.

The mannequin was at the top of the stairs.

"...Yes. All right. Please, Mary, show me."

The little girl held up her hand to him, and after a moment's hesitation, he took it. She didn't seem to mind the red stains.

* * *

He'd walked past the Fabricated World painting half a dozen times before. A painting of yet another room full of paintings, dizzying to look at. It was only now that Mary insisted this was the way out, urging him to stop and look closer, that he saw the figures in the painting move.

Mary looked away from it, focused on plucking petals from her rose one by one. "That's where Daddy comes from. I always used to meet him here," she said. "And then he'd leave again, when he was done painting."

"How?"

She shrugged. "But he used to bring me things from over there. He gave me a doll, want to see?"

He found he recognized the paintings hanging in that window to another world. Images he'd walked past here. A little girl, surrounded by gold roses. And he found himself wondering if, somewhere out of sight, his own portrait was hanging on those gallery walls. Young and beautiful, like the day it was painted.

No - not just wondering. He was sure that was true. Something buried deep in that confused tangle of his memories from before this place told him so, murmuring of a portrait on display in one place or another, shuffled about, lost to long years of storage, and now dragged back into the light. A beautiful portrait, with an ugly spirit along for the ride.

"And he brought me crayons! So now I can make things, too. Is that what _real_ means? Making things? Do you make things?"

"No."

The longer he looked, the more detailed the image became. Finally he couldn't tell whether he was looking at a painting or a window, one that opened onto a gallery that should have been identical to this one, but which somehow promised to be so much more welcoming. An image filled with people so real he could reach out and touch them.

When he did reach out, he touched only a painted canvas.

"But he hasn't brought me anything in a long time, because he's been busy. With his self-portrait." Mary had run out of petals to pluck. "So I've been drawing lots of new friends instead, and I'm going to show him. When he's done." She paused. "How long does it take to paint a self-portrait, do you know?"

On the other side of the painting, a couple wandering the gallery paused and seemed to stare through the frame. They moved their lips soundlessly, heads bent together. Dorian pounded on the canvas with his fist, but the couple didn't react, didn't seem to see him at all. But Mary gave a cry of horror and pulled on his arm.

"Stop that!" she said. "You'll hurt it!"

"How do I make it work?" Dorian demanded, rounding on her, and then froze. The mannequins had appeared in a line behind her. Protectively, he thought. Or as protective as anything could look, without a head.

"You - you can't. You have to wait."

"You said this was the way out!"

"It _is_! Daddy used to come here and then leave again, see? And, and that was okay, because he's from over there. And then he came here and he let someone else leave, and now _he_ has to stay, but you can't just go through by yourself, that's not how it works, you need somebody to trade places, because, because you need a soul, and, and he wouldn't tell me what that is. Is that what _real_ means? A soul? Nobody will tell me anything! And now he's here all the time, but he doesn't talk to anybody anymore, and he doesn't come upstairs anymore, and we can't see him anymore, and it's not fair, and you shouldn't yell at me!"

And then Dorian laughed. He wasn't sure he would be able to stop.

"You can't get out without a soul," he repeated. "Wonderful. What am I, then?"

"But what does that _mean_?" Mary said, hesitant.

"An excellent question! I suppose it means we're monsters, you and I. And I suppose this is where monsters belong." He sank to the floor and passed a hand over his eyes, hesitated for only a moment at the sight of the red stains that refused to go away, and then rested his head against his hands anyway. "I'm so tired."

After a moment he felt Mary pat his head. Her quiet, sympathetic voice asked, "Do you want to go back to your frame?"

He started to laugh again.

* * *

For the first time in years, a new painting was added to the fabricated world. It was an ugly sort of painting, and it seemed upset about that, so Mary tried her best to help, but in the end she had to give up and scribble over her attempts. She still needed more practice before she could paint like her Daddy. But she found a fine place to hang it, an out-of-the-way little room, nice and quiet and with a view of the stars. She liked to come and curl up underneath it and talk about _real_ and _souls_ , although she couldn't understand him too well through the scribbles.

Underneath the frame, she carefully spelled out a new title: _Mistake._


End file.
